


The People You Ignored

by Romiress



Category: Batman (Comics)
Genre: Bruce Wayne is a Bad Parent, City of Bane Response, Comic Spoilers, Fix-It, Gen, Grief/Mourning, POV Jason Todd
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-07
Updated: 2019-09-07
Packaged: 2020-10-12 00:57:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20555588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Romiress/pseuds/Romiress
Summary: A Fix It Fic for City of Bane, up to Batman Issue 77 / 78 Preview.





	The People You Ignored

It's been five weeks when he gets a hit. Five weeks since he left Gotham on what should have been a day trip and found he couldn't go back. Three weeks since Damian vanished.

Two weeks and four days since he and Tim buried Alfred's body after it was dumped outside Gotham City limits.

He tries not to think about things. Any time he thinks he finds himself breaking. Instead, he busies himself with other things, with tasks that need doing.

They didn't come together the first few weeks, but after Damian went into the city they have no other choice. He's never worked as closely with Tim as he does right then. He's never collaborated so well with what remains of the family.

Most of them are missing. Most of them are just  _ gone, _ trapped behind the walls of Gotham and cut off from the world. He doesn't know what happened to Steph or Cass. Barbara and her father are just missing.

He doesn't know what happened to  _ Damian. _ To Damian, the boy who should be his brother if their family wasn't so fucked up. The boy who was too young for whatever's happening to him.

He forces Tim to eat whenever they're around each other, but the younger boy is still losing weight, for all Jason's attempts.

It's five weeks in when he gets the hit, and it feels like it's come too late. Five weeks and the family that was always a bit broken feels shattered. Like this isn't something they can recover from.

The tip he gets doesn't feel like a tip. It feels like a false lead. When things first went down he reached out to his contacts outside of Gotham and put out an offer: cash, in exchange for the locations of certain people. He's Red Hood, and that means he'd want to know where Gotham's wealthiest ran away too. He's already found two in the Bahamas, but they don't have any actual value.

The only one that really matters is Bruce. Where  _ Bruce _ went to. He's vanished into the air without a word, and while Jason put his name down on the list, he didn't expect to get a response.

He meets his contact in a cafe in Metropolis and gives him five grand for a photo of one of the people on his list, along with a location. When he looks at the picture, he finds a familiar face staring back at him. Bruce. Bruce with a mustache in his  _ Malone _ disguise, but  _ Bruce. _ Bruce, alive. Bruce, wearing shorts and holding a paddle in one hand while he sips from a fruity drink.

"Guy had an accent consistent with this area," his contact said. "A guy I know thought he looked a lot like Wayne with a mustache, riding out this whole thing."

Jason thanks the man for his time and gives him some extra cash for finding such a good target, and then he goes back to his safehouse.

He breaks everything in the safehouse, and then breaks everything again.

It's the cow that does him in. The  _ fucking cow. _ He's teased Damian a million times about the cow, about making burgers out of it and using it as emergency supplies just to mess with him.

Only there's no way Bane's going to just let a cow live in his batcave. Bane's probably already killed the cow. For all he knows, Bane's fed the cow to Damian.

It'll break Damian's heart.

And then he realizes that nothing is going to break his heart as much as the fact that Alfred's dead and he breaks everything again.

He doesn't tell Tim. He doesn't know what to say to Tim. He should, because so much of what's wrong with their family comes down to people not telling anyone else about things, but he  _ can't. _ He can't find the words to say  _ I found Bruce and he's sipping mai tais at the beach. _

He can't risk being wrong. What he has with the rest of the people who've been left behind feels painfully tenuous, like it could break at any moment. If he tells them it's Bruce and it isn't, he'll be thrown out again, and he  _ can't. _ He can't risk it.

He takes a plane to the club pictured in the photo. He isn't expecting to find him there. There's no way Bruce would still be in the same fucking club four days later.

But he is. He's there on the beach, staring out at the sunset, with  _ Selina fucking Kyle _ beside him.

Jason doesn't see red. He doesn't see anything at all. He's pretty sure his rage is so extreme he simply blacks out. One minute he's standing twenty feet away, and the next he's swinging at Bruce's face.

He's pretty sure he's yelling. He doesn't even know  _ what _ he's yelling, but he's yelling. People are freaking out, securities coming, and he knows better than to let himself get arrested. Not when Bruce's nose is bleeding. Even if he isn't going to press charges, they'll still want to make an example out of him.

So he has to go. He has to go fast. But not before he looks at Bruce one last time to make sure he knows where Jason stands.

"Don't come back," Jason says. "Don't ever come back. He's dead because of you, because  _ you _ didn't contact us, and everything that happens is your fault."

He leaves. He leaves by leapfrogging over security, deftly evading them as he bolts off of resort property.

He's on a plane back to the States before the police can organize a proper search for him. He takes the first one available and ends up in Central City, forced to bounce around the states to get back to Metropolis.

He needs to tell Tim. He has to tell Tim what he saw. He has to tell him the  _ truth, _ because keeping those kinds of secrets has never done anything to help anyone.

They'll find a way to fix the problem. They'll get help. They'll save Damian. They'll stop Bane.

And they'll do it without Bruce.


End file.
